Albo seeks support, solace in Tassie after stumbling out of the gate

Anthony Albanese, neat dark-blue suit, white shirt, designer glasses, all smiles, seated outside Banjo’s Bakery Café amid a circle of nurses talking about the need to pump some money into the state’s terrible health system and to give primary care staff the respect they deserve.

We were in Devonport’s Rooke Street mall, the AH Pease shoe store and Best and Less opposite, down a bit the Devonport books n gifts, pink furbies and Trent Dalton in the window, then JeansWest and the century-old jewellers, and mostly elderly couples outside the coffee shops, Miller shirts and pink knitwear, sun beating down on the pinkish mall flooring, and it was all going swimmingly.

The nurses were loving Albo — they’d want to, having been steered here by nursing union types — and he was relaxing and getting into it. “They can spend millions on advertising but they can’t spend some money on nursing training,” he said to furious agreement. They talked about aged care and the crisis in it. Albo listened carefully as a nurse inspector talked of the terrible conditions she saw going round the homes, and Albo emphasised Labor’s plan for change. This was great!

Then, a sudden look from him. A slight rise from the chair. He had been caught short, clearly. Mid flow in midflow, as it were. Must have been insistent cos he rose from his chair quickly with a muttered excuse, scurried into Banjo’s — surprising one of his security detail sitting in the window and halfway into a giant hotdog — and scurried out again. Banjo’s clearly lacked what country Australia once called “comfort station facilities”. Helpful senior-citizen locals then got into it when they realised the purpose of his walkabout within the walkabout.

“There’s one over the road and around the corner near Belle and Beau hair.”

“No, the one in the baby shop’s nearer.”

“Not if you take a dog-leg round the lane…”

By now he was bounding off, advisers and security scurrying to catch up, mind whirring I bet. How to appear leaderly while looking for a place to do a number one? Stride purposefully, I guess, remind yourself that as bad as this looks the alternative would be worse.

 He disappeared into a building and by the time he came out the travelling press had arrived off the bus, a phalanx of cameras charging up the mall, and he could look like he was striding purposefully to meet some supporters. A lucky break.

He’d earned it. This was a couple of hours after he’d made the cash rate/unemployment rate gaffe in Launceston, first kick-off of the campaign. Look, I hate to do it to team red, I’d much rather be eviscerating the other side, but things have already hit a a rough patch when the takeaway victory of the day is not pissing yourself at Banjo’s Bakery Café.

In the interim, a woman from a bank was giving an impromptu press conference for such press as had arrived: “Security is my issue. We’re not some little hobbits down here, only thinking about local issues,” she brayed. “What about China? What about the power of the UN? I watch the cable news channels, all of them and ….” and a shaggy bloke in a black T-shirt, a mobility vehicle, and one and a half legs, Dave, came up to Chris Lynch, tall, big-shouldered, bald, Labor candidate for Braddon: “Yeah, Chris, I can’t get a GP appointment for five weeks for me mum. I’m her full-time carer now.” Dave was without plaint or rancour. Lynch talked to him with genuine warmth, said he’d see what he could do, and when Dave was gone, just shook his head in rue. “He’s his mother’s carer…”

Team Albo’s instincts were right enough. Start at the most marginal electorate in the country, at one of its swingingest booths — Invermay, just north of the Launceston CBD — and then move up to Devonport in Braddon, a strong labour harbour town, sitting on a 3.5% or so margin for the sitting Liberal, both places doing it very tough. Launch a specific health promise — two specialist ear clinics for the state of a type of which they have none — making your general commitments clear, while also giving a few hundred or thousand parents something very specific to vote for.

Bridget Archer has a margin of 280 votes in Bass, and almost no one lasts more than a term here. It’s like the Somme. Labor is hoping to add Archer and Braddon MP Gavin Pearce to the roll. 

Then, jaysus, that gaffe. Your correspondent had not heard about it when the Devonport walkaround occurred. Later, watching it on TV in the bar at the Argosy motel. I saw how awful it was. Left Twitter was trying to spin it as nothing much, but that is desperate. Yeah, stupid gotcha questions, but it’s the unemployment rate, for chrissake. Yes, you should know this. Brain freeze? Brain fart? Don’t have them.

Poor Albo. He was trying to get that out of his head all the rest of the morning. No wonder he looked a bit subdued at the start of the encounter. And it didn’t help that someone in the advance team had helpfully bought cake for the nurses, so there was a plate of sliced-up lamingtons and danishes placed in front of him. Because that’s just what a man who’s dieting through 20-hour days wants to see: bite-size carbs within reach, day-glo bright in the sun. 

So, strategically, yes, but tactically? Team Albo’s travelling show needs a tightening up. You gotta ask your leader before he starts on a walkabout if he needs to use the boom-boom room. You gotta know where they are before you get there. If the whole purpose of the exercise is for visuals and word-of-mouth, no detail should be too, well, pissy, for attention.

The policy? Well, look, before the cameras got there your correspondent threw out a question for anyone to ask Albo: what one simple thing would you want a new Labor government to do for the Tasmanian health system straightaway? Because the system is a disgrace, a crime, with these waits for a GP appointment, 500 days for pain-relieving surgery, beds made out of layers of towels in emergency rooms. Australians are dying in Tasmania of conditions that other Australians would survive. (It’s worse for First Nations people, here and elsewhere, of course. But it is very, very bad here.) The state government has stripped money from what the system needs in order to build up budget surpluses, and the federal government hasn’t filled the gap. 

There wasn’t much of a groundswell of anger and demand, to be truthful. This was a Labor-friendly crowd, and Tasmanians, for all the bravado that appears to surround, and issue from, Jacqui Lambie, can be a reserved lot. But Albo wasn’t offering any cris de coeur either. Modest promises is the program. Specialist clinics, and a bit more for nurses. There’s more in Labor’s detailed program, but it’s interesting they weren’t that keen to tubthump the table with it. 

Albo used a short 30-second stand-up as he left to try to spin the gaffe: “This morning I made a mistake … When I make a mistake I don’t try to cover it up or blame someone else … That’s what leadership is.” That was about as good as could be got. (That evening, people would marvel at John Howard’s dismissal of it, “support from an unlikely quarter”. You’re kidding, aren’t you? The gaffe had run its course, had its effect. Howard knows ScoMo will do something like it eventually. It’s a six-week campaign. When he does, it can be immediately written off. By the Old Rodent himself.) Just before he left, though, Albo really turned the thing neatly, still surrounded by attentive nurses.

“You know I had a car accident a while back, and it was a little serious, and I was in the hospital and I realised I was in the same room my mum had been 20 years earlier for a condition. She didn’t come back out, but she got the very best care and so did I, and I thought that’s what so great about Medicare, that a pensioner and a man who might be prime minister get the same treatment.” And that was getting the double on the flip, and it was moving and true enough, and what we want to see more of, team Albo, and also, tighten it the f*** up.

The crew nipped out of the mall, a few others followed for a while, Dave on the mobility, before they climbed into the black cars and were gone.